Training through minor shoulder impingement

[Matt James]

(And before I get yelled at, I spent part of last night and a fair part of this morning reading through old posts on the subject, most or all seem to be about chronic shoulder problems)

Monday night I was assembling a dog crate/kennel that I built, and obviously I didn't think too much about my arm/shoulder geometry while driving screws, because I woke up yesterday with a fair amount soft tissue pain adjacent to the AC joint in both shoulders (worse on my dominant side, but I use tools with either hand based on convenience, so I managed to inflame the non-dominant one too).

I'm not particularly worried about it in the long-term since I know exactly what caused it, and how to avoid it going forward, but I'm curious if there's any reason to avoid doing bench presses until it resolves, or switching to incline presses. I haven't had any issues with impingement on my bench presses before now, because I've been quite conscious of form there (unlike in my, uh, screwing). I just don't want to aggravate it further and turn a mild, acute problem into a more serious chronic one. Also my next scheduled bench day isn't until Friday anyway. Shoulder hangs between sets? Just quit worrying?

(I'm already taking an anti-inflammatory dose of ibuprofen.)

Thanks.

[Matt James]

Forgive me if bumping this is bad form. I'm still curious about whether I should even worry about this. My right shoulder is still pretty sore (aggravated it again a little while busting out frozen bolts on the back end of my car). I've pressed only for the past 3 workouts with no additional pain but I've been nervous about getting under the bar on the bench. Should I be?

[Mark Rippetoe]

The empty bar on the bench makes you nervous?

[Matt James]

Not usually.

I'm at 195 on the bench, or was a week and a half ago. My normal bench press form (i.e. what you show in the book) hasn't caused pain since I started the program (and I've had a prior history of rotator cuff tendonitis, mostly aggravated by crappy mechanics in playing the trombone, of all things). But at the moment, pushing away from my chest even with a lower femoral angle hurts up near the AC joint. Hence why I have avoided benching. Pressing seems fine. I get some muscle pain back in the infraspinatus but it doesn't seem to be particularly aggravated by either pressing or chins.

I can push hard on the acromion process without much pain today, which tells me that the inflammation isn't too bad (as opposed to last week when it was very tender). So it may resolve itself as long as I don't do anything else stupid. I wish I understood the shoulder anatomy better when I was 20, but so it goes.